Chapter 12 #2
“You’d rather be back in Annapolis, in that tiny apartment with just your cat and a psycho who’s obsessed with you across the hall? You want to live your life scared every fucking day? Follow your routine, be lonely, and be alive, but not fucking living?”
No. I wouldn’t.
“You’d rather that than be here, with people who give a shit about you? People who are happy to look out for you, who want to see you happy. I want to see you happy, Annie. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.”
I’d do anything for him. I want to tell him that. I’m going to, but I can’t. I can’t tell him anything because I can’t speak. It hurts to swallow, my chest is swelling, and my head is tingling. I feel it happening, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
An empty, overwhelming, gruesome ambiguity takes over me, from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair, deep into the depths of my soul.
It’s not a panic attack. It’s something far more intense, far worse than anything I’ve experienced before.
Why? Why is this happening now? Why does Ben have to see me like this?
The walls around me begin to close in, and the air grows thick, hot, and dry.
The setting rays of the sun glitter on my skin, but a cloud of darkness thunders overhead, wrapping around my skin, tightening like a vise, ravaging my veins, until it smothers me to my very core.
I dig my nails into it and try to rip it off me, but it’s not letting go.
It never lets fucking go.
It never leaves.
It hurts.
God, everything hurts. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to beg whoever will listen to make this fucking misery go away. But I don’t do any of that. I don’t make a peep. I let it consume me.
I feel sick.
Heartsick.
Hollow.
Hopeless.
The floor is crumbling beneath me, and I’m getting pulled under. Like always, there’s nobody here to save me. I’m all I have. The only one I can rely on. I can’t breathe. I need to get out of here. I have to go somewhere else…anywhere else.
Go, move. Run.
Move, Annie. I will myself. I fight against the restraints holding me back, but the truth slaps me across the face, sending me headfirst into an unyielding wall of reality.
Its dull bricks are a relic of the gravestone that will eventually mark my solitary existence and desolate death, a taunting reminder that my fear is inevitable. I’m going to die alone.
My vision is blurry, hot numbness tears through my vertebrae, and I feel myself sinking, dissolving. The stars floating around me invite me to join them, and I reach out, accepting their invitation to join them in the abyss…finally.
“… happening. Christ, Annie. Open your eyes.”
Ben.
His voice is far away, but I feel him close. Why is he close? “Hey, hey, Annie, look at me.”
He repeats his command, jostling me slightly.
I feel a little sting on my cheek, then another.
“Look at me, Blue.” Blue. The blinding orbs flit and float away as Ben’s irises slowly take their place.
His face glistens with a sheen of sweat, eyes wide with worry.
He presses his forehead on mine, and my lungs wheeze as a breath forces its way out.
“There ya go. Breathe. Yes. Good, baby. Good. You’re okay,” Ben encourages as he pulls me into his arms like I’m a baby.
And then he holds me, he cradles me, and he wraps me up in everything he has to offer. I claw my way out of smothering doubt and burrow deep into the refuge of his conviction. Suppressed emotions force their way out of my subconscious and spill onto his shirt.
I sob in his arms until there’s nothing left to let go of, and shove my face in his neck, realizing I just unleased an entire lifetime of insecurity on him.
“Annie.”
I don’t want to look at him, but I can’t avoid him forever. I tilt my head back, and he takes his time studying my face, something I’ve never seen working behind his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothin’ to be sorry for.” He swipes his thumbs across my cheeks. The last of my tears escapes, and I can finally see clearly…I finally see him.
I push on his chest and sit up, but his arm is wrapped around my waist, so that’s as far as I get. And I don’t mind. “It’s embarrassing,” I confess, leaning over to grab a couple of tissues.
“You’ve been dealing with some heavy shit. Having an emotional breakdown is anything but embarrassing.”
“I’m talking about my…situation.”
“Tell me about it.”
I nibble on the inside of my cheek. “You’re really not going to let me go, are you?”
“No. I’m not.” He tilts his head. “Do you really want me to?”
“No.”
He smiles.
I smile.
Then I tell him.
I tell him that because I lost my spot in the nursing program, I had to reapply, and I didn’t get in.
I tell him that I was so mad at my dad and I was so stubborn that even though we lived in the same house, I wouldn’t look at him.
I blamed him for everything bad that happened to me, even when it wasn’t his fault.
I tell him that I didn’t talk to him for almost a year.
“The last thing I remember saying to him was that I’d never forgive him for ruining my life.
And then he had his stroke, and it ruined his brain…
so bad. The state took every asset he had to fund his stay at the nursing home.
I got my CNA so I could get a job there and make sure he got the best care.
I don’t know if he was ever lucid enough to understand me, but every single night, I held his hand and apologized for being such a bad daughter. ”
Ben tucks some hair behind my ear. “You’re not a bad daughter. You were allowed to have your feelings, Annie.”
That’s not something I will ever agree with.
“Looking back, it wasn’t so much about me, though.
It was about you.” He pulls his head back.
“He shot you. He injured you permanently. And I know what you’re going to say, but he did that because he walked in and saw me freaking out because I was a fool and kissed you.
My reaction was why he reacted, and I projected that guilt onto him. ”
He starts to say something, but I cover his mouth. “You just said I’m allowed to have my feelings, so just let me finish.”
“All right,” he mumbles behind my hand.
I wring my fingers together as I continue. I need to power through, need to get this over with so maybe, just maybe, I can have a life here. Maybe Ben and I can stay close, at least as friends. “I missed you.”
“Annie…”
“I blamed my dad for that, too. I always wondered if you and I would have kept talking if that night never happened. If you’d have given me your number so I could text you a picture of my Skee Ball score and brag that you’ll never beat me.
” I suck in a breath and look at his ear so I don’t have to see his reaction.
“For four months with you, I was happy. And a foolish part of me had this fantasy that we’d become more than friends.
I blamed my dad for ruining that, too, because it was easier than admitting to myself that you’d never see me as more than a sister. ”
When a tense minute goes by, I finally look into his eyes, and the second I do, he stands. “You’re staying.”
Um… what? “I guess.”
“It’s not a question. You are. But not here, I need to get you over there, to your new place.
You need to take a couple of days to decompress.
You need some time to accept this decision so when you get pissed at me down the road, you can’t throw resentment in my face.
I want you to want to be here with me.” He runs his hands through his hair almost as fast as he runs away from me.
“And I need you to do that somewhere else.”
Like a knife to the heart, I put a hand to my chest with a pained gasp.
He stops in his tracks and turns to me. His eyes flash with more emotions than I can count, and in a quick second, he closes the short distance between us, cups my jaw, and rubs his thumb across my mouth.
“I missed you, Annie. Do not ever doubt that. I’m glad you’re here.
I want you here.” Then he bends down and kisses me, hard and quick, but long enough that I feel the glide of his tongue across my lips.
“And make no mistake, I do not think of you like a sister.”
Hope soars at the possibility of him, and I feel the shattered pieces of my heart fusing. That fragile organ in the center of my chest thuds back to life, reminding me that I still have a lot left of mine, and I want to live it.